Personally, I work with a lot of small business owners and I also read a lot about search engine optimization (SEO). Unfortunately, only a very small percentage of what’s written about SEO is written with small business owners in mind.

Most writing on SEO is intended to either persuade small business owners to purchase SEO services or else the writing is directed at other SEO experts. Very little is written simply to help a small business owner understand and make use of SEO.  I’d like to change that.  There are plenty of small business owners who can and should engage in SEO for their businesses without the assistance of a consultant.  Search Engine Optimization is a changing and complex field, but it’s not so complex that most small business owners can’t understand the most basic of SEO tactics.

This post covers a few basics about SEO, and I’ll cover this in more depth in other posts.

SEO is Achievable but Not Certain

Search engine optimization is constantly changing. Sure – there are consistent themes over time, but search engines are continually changing the playing field, and Google, for instance, is exactly forthcoming about the specific changes it makes to its ranking algorithms.

For this reason, nothing about SEO is absolutely certain. Nobody knows exactly how to get any particular website ranked #1. We know what will give a site the best chance to be ranked at the top, but any number if things could either change or go wrong.  This it true whether you’re performing your own SEO or have the world’s greatest consultant working for you.

If anyone makes any guaranties with respect to rankings or promises results, you should immediately move on, no matter how tempting their promises are.

Ranking Factors

In general, search engines strive to rank sites according to only one factor: which site is mostly likely to be relevant to and helpful for someone search for a particular keyword.  It sounds oversimplified, but this really is all that search engines strive for.  From the perspective of Google or Bing, they just want to match useful and relevant websites with people who are searching.  If they do that well, then people will keep using Google and Bing to find what they need.

The complexity is in how Google and Bing decide what is relevant and helpful.  One of the best places to start is Google’s own starter guide to SEO.  In some ways, this 32 page document is pretty much everything you need to know, despite the millions of words written on search engine optimization. 

As I noted above, search engines look for relevance and helpfulness.  Here is how each is determined, in general:

Relevance

Relevance is obviously how pertinent a website is to a particular search term.  If you and I both read a webpage about "Merlin", we’d probably both agree that it was pretty relevant to the search term "King Arthur Wizard".  As you can imagine, though, search engines don’t have somebody going out and reading every page on the web.  Consequently, search engines rely on algorithms that look at a number of things on the webpage to determine what it’s about. 

A few of the things that search engines look at are title tags, headings, and words that are common throughout the page.  For the Merlin page, it might happen to have a title tag of "Merlin the Wizard" and a heading at the top of the page that reads "The Greatest Wizard of King Arthur’s Time".  In addition, the words King Arthur, Merlin, and Wizard are probably mentioned several times throughout the body of the page.  All of these factors then combine to tell a search engine that the page is actually pretty relevant to a search about "King Arthur Wizard."

Without going into too much detail yet, the basic takeaway is that if you want your site to be ranked for a particular search term, then your page needs to be relevant to that search term.  This is accomplished at least partially by making sure that the term occurs various places, like your title tag, your heading, and the body of your page.  None of these things are absolutely necessary for getting a page ranked, but they all help.

Helpfulness

The fact that a page is relevant to a search term is not enough, mostly because there are now millions of pages that are at least somewhat relevant to most search terms.  The bigger question is which of those millions of potentially relevant pages is most likely to be helpful to someone searching for that term?

Google and Bing can’t read a searcher’s mind, so they do the next best thing.  They go out and figure out how popular each page is.  Instead of taking surveys, the search engines look at links back to a page to determine its popularity. 

There is a big caveat, however.  All links to a site are not created equal.  Some sites are considered very authoritative (for one extreme, think about the White House’s website), and many many sites are considered not authoritative at all (think, for instance, about a site with just one page that was just put up yesterday).  A link from an authoritative site means a lot more than a link from a site with no authority.

This is all a vast oversimplification, but the takeaway is that you need to have links back to your site.  Those links should be from sites that are as authoritative as possible and also as relevant as possible to your website’s topic.

Getting Ranked

In later posts, I’ll go into a bit more detail about ways to accomplish getting ranked based on relevance and helpfulness, but this is the basis from which you, as a small business owner, need to think about SEO. 

I’ve been on a kick lately with many of my clients about focusing on building relationships.  This really applies to any business anywhere, but particularly for attorneys and law firms, building relationships is absolutely essential to your long-term success.

There was a time, in the US and elsewhere, that almost all business came either because you had a captive audience (you were the only lawyer in town) or else because someone knew somebody else who recommended you.  In other words, if you had any competition, then you relied almost exclusively on recommendations and referrals.

Without overstating the obvious, times have changed.  For well over a hundred years now, lawyers have been able to advertise in newspapers and periodicals.  Radio and TV offered new forms of marketing, and the Internet is another story altogether.  Personally, I highly recommend making use of every opportunity you have to market yourself and your firm.  However…

You CANNOT rely solely on the Internet, TV, or any other form of advertising. 

You MUST build strong and lasting relationships in your field…

On the one hand, I’ve seen attorneys and law firms who rely solely on one form of advertising do amazing business one year, only to have it completely dry up for the next couple years because something has gone wrong with their advertising or their Google rankings.  On the other hand, I routinely meet and work with attorneys and law firms who do almost no advertising yet have a constant and continual stream of clients.  These attorneys and law firms maintain dozens or even hundreds of excellent relationships in their industry, and people who know them constantly refer clients.

I don’t know about you, but I’d rather be in that second group of attorneys and law firms.

Now, building relationships sounds like a great idea to almost everyone, but the problem is that it’s not easy to do.  It requires work on your part, and it takes time.  Here are a few tips to get started:

1. Get out there!  You’ll never meet anyone in your industry unless you’re in the same places that they are.  Industry events are great places to network, and I don’t include bar events in this category.  You need to widen your network beyond lawyers.  If you’re a real estate attorney, for example, get out to real estate events and meet brokers and investors.
2. Follow up with everybody!  It’s amazing how many people (myself included) meet someone, hit it off, and then never follow up.  I have to find this tendency constantly, and so should you.  If you meet someone, at least send them an email.  If there is some way in which you can help them, then by all means, do so.
3. Offer Help!  If you see someone that you can help, particularly with legally-related services, then offer your help with no questions asked.  Obviously, I don’t mean to take on an entire case that will take up hundreds of hours of your time.  However, if you can spend a couple hours helping someone, then those couple hours will almost always pay off down the road.

As I said, none of these tips will lead to a quick influx of clients very often.  There are other ways to do that in the short term.  However, there is no better way to guarantee your long term success than by establishing a strong network in your field. 

If you have any additional tips or tricks, or any stories about building relationships and how it’s helped your business, please share them in the comments below!

Here’s a quick video where I talk about more:

Starting a law firm is tough, even if you’ve been practicing law for a long time.  Unless you’ve been actively involved in all aspects of the management of a firm or similar business, you’re definitely going to run into some unexpected difficulties.  Someone has to be responsible for EVERY SINGLE ASPECT of the business, and much of that responsibility will likely fall to you, whether it’s dealing with outside contractors, record-keeping, or, of course, marketing.

I’m a little bit biased given my focus on marketing, but let me make a quick case for why marketing should be your primary focus when starting a law firm:

Until you have enough clients, nothing else really matters, and here is why: 

I’m oversimplifying a bit, but this is something that attorneys who are starting out on their own or who are starting a new law firm need to repeat to themselves every day.  It’s easy to think that you’re being productive and making progress by organizing your new office, hiring a new assistant, or setting up internal policies and procedures.  Unfortunately, none of these things will ever matter if you’re not able to bring in clients. 

Most of what I’m saying is probably entirely obvious to you, but even so, I encourage you to stop for a minute and reflect about how you spend a majority of your time each day.  If you’re not spending most of your time on activities and tasks that will directly lead to new clients, then you need to stop and figure out how to course-correct. 

With that in mind, here are a few tips for starting a law firm:

1. Have a Written Client Development Plan:  Nothing needs to ever be so set in stone that you can’t deviate, but you absolutely must have a roadmap.  I don’t care if your plan for getting clients is becoming a modern-day town-crier, so long as it’s clear to you that you need to go out every day to the center of town and yell at the top of your lungs.  Without a plan, you will inevitably skip from one activity to another, which is a surefire recipe for failure.  On the other hand, if you have both a plan and the steps necessary to achieve that plan written down, you can and should follow the next tip…
2. Review Your Plan Every Morning:  Before you do anything else each day, you should take a look at your client development plan and figure out what tasks will most advance your plan that day.  As with any business, other urgent tasks and emergency tasks will arise quite often, but otherwise, your entire focus should be on getting the things done that will bring you clients.
3. Delegate Non-Client Development Tasks:  For some of you, this may be impossible, as you may not have anyone working with or for you yet.  However, if possible, hire someone (even an offshore outsourcer if necessary) to take care of tasks that are more ministerial in nature.  I see too many new firms get bogged down in the paperwork, filing, and administration before they are ever able to develop sufficient numbers of clients.

I’m in no way pretending that the above tips are even close to enough to know how to start a successful law firm.  As much as anything else, your ultimate success will hinge on the quality of the work you do and the relationships that you create and cultivate. 

In the beginning, however, you absolutely must focus on getting paying clients, which is always easier said than done.  Having a plan and always trying to take actions that further that plan (even if the plan changes based on results or non-results) is they key to making sure that you’ll get paying clients.

If you have your own stories about starting a law firm or about client client development, please leave them in the comments section below!

I had a recent sub-par personal experience with a company selling a couch through Amazon.  The experience wasn’t horrible, and I harbor no resentment toward the company that I won’t name, but it reminded me of a fundamental point for all business, in their marketing or otherwise.

You must have systems in place for almost everything.

Here’s what happened to me:  We bought a couch through Amazon (but sold by a third party).  The company gave a range of dates when the couch might ship.  The last date in the range came and went, and I had heard nothing from the company, so we called them.  The first 2 times we called, they put us on hold and never came back to the phone.  The third time, they told us that the person who handled Amazon orders was not yet in, but that he would be shortly.  We called back about 1/2 and hour later, and they told us that, in fact, he was on vacation that week, but that they would have someone else call us.  No one ever did.  We filed a claim through Amazon and finally received an email from the company saying that they did not have the couch in inventory, that hte manufacturer was out of stock, and that it would be 2 weeks before the manufacturer would even ship. 

Many companies, even good ones, occasionally sell something that they don’t have in stock, typically by accident because of an error in the inventory count.  However, well-run companies always have a system in place to immediately notify their customers if there is going to be a delay in shipping a product, whether due to inventory or otherwise.  It took us 4 calls and an Amazon complaint to get the company to tell us that the couch was out-of-stock 3 weeks after we ordered it.

What this means for my business, your business, and every other business that aspires to be successful

Things don’t happen unless you have a system in place to make them happen.  If you’re business consists of just you, then you may well make sure everything happens just by force of will.  However, if you have even one employee, one independent contractor, or anyone or anything else not 100% in your control at all times, then the only way to make sure that your business is run consistently well is to put systems in place.  If you run a medium or larger business, then you likely already have systems in place for certain aspects of your business (automation of sales and shipping, hiring of employees, information technology, etc.). 

But what about marketing?  What systems do you have in place there?  Sadly, even many established businesses have few or no systems in place for marketing.  Often, marketing for a company takes on the flavor of the day, matching whatever technology is in vogue or whatever individual currently controls marketing.  Again, things often just don’t get done that way.

As much as anything else, marketing is about consistency.  It’s about consistently interacting with your existing clients, consistently putting yourself and your business in front of potential clients, and establishing a consistent message and theme for your business.  All too often, marketing efforts will be put on the back-burner for 3-4 months at a time while other matters take precedence.  Unfortunately, this often cripples much of the effort that has already been put into a marketing campaign.

Here at Marketing Lift-Off, we have our own systems in place for our business, and we have marketing systems that we put in place for our clients.  We produce consistent marketing results and consistently report to our clients, but we also urge our clients to put their own internal systems in place to review our efforts, make sure that what we’re achieving aligns with their goals, and let us know if it’s not for some reason so that we can change what we do.  We constantly strive to improve our systems, as we feel it’s critical to the long-term success of any business.

How about you?  Any systems that you find more critical than others? 

(Photo courtesy of Leo Reynolds)

If you’re involved in marketing your business online, or if you happen to be discussing the topic with other business owners, then you’ll inevitably hear chatter about one or another Google updates, often referred to by a code name such as "Panda."  It’s almost as if Google must be running a military campaign against businesses trying to establish their online presence.

You should be very afraid…

Clearly, if everyone is talking about what happened to their rankings as a result of the latest Google update, you should also be very concerned if your website took a hit in search engine rankings and traffic, right?

Not so fast.  Marketing your business is not a war with Google.  If you have a product or service that people want to find and website designed to properly market that product or service, then Google actually wants its searchers to find your site.  Really.  Google wants to provide the best possible experience to searchers, just like you, as a business owner, want to provide the best possible experience to your clients, in both cases to make sure that they keep coming back.

Unfortunately, there may be instances when a Google update disrupts your site’s rankings and/or traffic, either because Google’s updates are never perfect, or because Google values something that it feels your website is lacking.  Fortunately, there are ways to make sure that this happens as infrequently as possible and that your site typically benefits from Google updates (as do most of our client’s sites – hence why we often look forward to Google updates).

Hate the Player, not the Game

Actually, this isn’t a game (it’s your business), and there’s not really any reason to hate anyone here, particularly Google.  Here’s what you can do:

1. Provide valuable, unique, and timely content to your customers and potential customers, largely through your website.  It all depends on your business, but this doesn’t mean you have to write to your readers every day (some businesses might want to, however), or that every communication has to be pure gold.  Google, though, does obviously value good, unique content that is constantly updated, because they know that searchers will value that content.  What’s even better is that every potential customer that does reach your site will be that much more likely to become an actual customer because they can already see the type of value you are able to provide.
2. Work with Google to promote your online presence.  Now, ideally Google would like for every business owner to be happy waiting for their website to be found "naturally" by other people.  We all know that leaving it up to chance could potentially take forever, since there is effectively much luck involved in that case.  However, what you can do for your business is find ways to both optimize your site so that it’s more appealing to visit, stay on, and link to, and also find ways to secure more high-quality, relevant links back to your site (e.g., contact any relevant trade unions or industry groups that you belong to).  It’s the route I take with all of my clients, and it’s both the safest and most effective long-term strategy.
3. Play it Safe.  I love getting ahead and helping other businesses get ahead, but not at the potential expense of my future or the future of any client.  You should treat your business the same way when it comes to playing nice with Google.  There are tactics that are clearly frowned upon by Google in terms of securing higher rankings, and while they may pay off in the short term, Google will eventually find a way to ensure that those tactics come back to haunt the businesses using them.  I’ve seen other online marketers use these tactics, and they and their clients have been hit hard by some of the "Panda" updates, costing them both a lot of wasted money and time.

The moral of this story is that it pays to invest in tested and long-term marketing techniques, rather than speculating in short-term, questionable tactics. The end payoff is always much greater than any short-term gains.